Iguana-on-a-stick

Unrelated question.

Playing a Shaper, I find that once I have all my pods/spores (even after dumping the ones I prefer to just cast as normal spells) and my perma-buff items and some gear-swap items (tinker's glove, leadership belt thingie) and my living tools and my crystals and my wands...

I have barely any inventory space left.

So how do you handle carrying around the different types of batons and thorns for a missile guardian?

Skip out on carrying wands or crystals? Take a lot of trips back to town to pick up your reaper baton?

Curing effects and healing are very important, of course.

But in general, mind magic tends to be extremely powerful. A humble daze spell can take out half a group of enemies. (luck willing.) A single charm/dominate effect can turn a battle around completely. Chances are the charmed enemy is closer to his friends than you are, so they will all start attacking the poor schmuck. Much more cost effective then trying to heal your creations.

https://imgur.com/a/O4wsW0C

Doesn't seem to be the case now.

There's a different ring that gives 25% critical hit change, though.

Few nitpicks:

On 2/24/2021 at 5:33 PM, Randomizer said:

- Speed Band (+10% to creation haste chance) 3000c

- Control Aura Band (+10% creation Mind Effects res., +25% to creation hit chance) 3000c

1 is called "speed aura band" (helpful for people doing searches.)

2 gives +5% to hit according to the description, not +25%. Maybe was changed? Though +25% seems rather huge...

9 hours ago, googoogjoob said:

The tooltip shows the percent increase in damage in parentheses after the base damage numbers (eg, my Roamer has 7 Magical Skill, so it shows "(+35%)" after the base damage numbers in the tooltip for its main breath attack). It's a little odd that it doesn't show the actual effective number, with the multiplier applied.

Ah, so that's what it means. I did not understand the percentage display at all.

Still a bit annoying to have to make the calculation when trying to determine creation damage... but at least there's a method to the madness. Thanks for the info.

One thing I am very confused about is this:

If I raise a creation's level, the damage on their ability tooltip increases.

However, if I raise a creation's stats, their damage on the tooltip does not increase.

Adding a point of dexterity or strength or intelligence or endurance all results in the same damage tooltip. Equipping the helix bracer or some other stat-boosting item does not change the damage tooltip.

Is the damage tooltip wrong, or do stats not help? From the description above I am assuming the tooltip does not include the stat multiplier, but if so that seems like either a bug or just a very unhelpful UI implementation.

(Endurance certainly does give creations a hitpoint boost, and higher dex does seem to boost turn order, so stats certainly do SOMETHING.)

Having damage show accurately on the tooltip would be particularly useful when trying to figure out which stats boost it. Is a Fyora's fire breath a magic attack or a missile attack? This post tells me it is magic, but I did not know that from what the game told me.

But leadership skill will.

Fair enough on the Drakons. They're definitely the preferred choice for the Serviles.

Question is what they will do to the non-shaper humans though.

As for Terrestia's fate: as I recall the framing story of G5 involved a future people exploring the ruins of a lost civilisation and finding records of your deeds. But I may be misremembering, it's been a few years since I played.

If I believed the rebels could win without triggering mutually assured destruction, I would agree. But they do not have enough power, and most of the humans who join them are... as you put it, opportunistic buttholes who think they can use it to gain power. So to win the war they need to shape themselves with canisters and the geneforges, with all the madness that ensues, and to use the weapons of mass destruction, like the self-replicating worm swarms and the unbound. And once unleashed, it becomes rather difficult to contain those.

And once the shapers are pressed hard enough, they start breaking their own taboos and do the same things.

As for the the Drakons... they are certainly are better off rebelling, but they do not want to free creations. They want to rule over them instead of the Shapers. So those aren't exactly savoury allies.

That leaves the Drayks and Serviles as the most sympathetic parties in the whole mess. But they can't exactly win the rebellion on their own either.

Of course, as I recall it the Geneforge 5 story implies that the use of Shaping eventually did wipe out civilisation on Terrestia. So yeah, not a lot of happy endings here.

The Shapers are horrible.

And yet I usually end up siding with them, because the alternatives tend to be worse.

(Also, in Geneforge 1-3 you play a Shaper and so your character was likely indoctrinated by them to believe shapers are always right. 4 probably involves the opposite, a character who must have had some motivation to join the Rebellion. 5 gives you a truly blank slate character.)

Not in Geneforge 1 of course. The Shapers are long gone and better for everyone if they stay that way. But when it comes to the Rebellion... the Drakons, the Unbound, the worm-plagues...

No matter how morally bankrupt the way the Shapers treat their creations is, theirs is a distant kind of tyranny where the majority of the population is left alone to live their lives how they please. People are oppressed in that they can't learn Shaping and that if they are suspected of trying they will be instantly condemned or executed, but that affects a small percentage of people. For almost everybody else, NOT having the continent be devoured by war is much preferred.

Best choice would be if nobody has shaping and creations are free. But when I tried to side with the Trakyovites in G4, it turned out their plan was "lets make sure the war goes on a really long time and is utterly horrible and kills almost everyone, so people will finally realise that shaping is bad." Yeah, no.

I expect the Shapers took those serviles they cared about with them (those with valuable skills or maybe some they felt some attachment towards) and then just left because they were on a schedule. If they gave the remaining Serviles and Servant Minds any thought, I suspect they thought they would all just die.

Well, maybe some of the more optimistic Shapers thought they'd get permission to come back and find the Servant Minds still alive and doing their job.

If anything, I feel the fate of the Servant Minds is even more tragic than that of the Serviles. The Serviles at least had a chance to make their own lives. But the Minds? They're immensey powerful, but immobile. Deliberately crippled so they cannot become a threat to the Shapers. Loyal unto death. And left to slowly starve over centuries as the Shapers just abandoned them.

These are fun titles. Much more so than the Avadon ones that were just stuff from the game. Nice job.

3 hours ago, Micawber said:

 

Yeah but with a random chance, you just save and reload so your chances are always 100%

Even worse: your chances are directly linked to the player's willingness to waste time by reloading.

Worst offender here was the first new Wasteland game. So much of the time there was spent watching a (slow) progress bar to unlock a locker, and then either accept that you failed a 70% chance or you reloaded to get another shot and then you'd succceed to find a ball of pocket lint you could sell for a few bucks.

If you wanted to succeed at a 30% chance chest you could, if you spent 5 minutes watching the reload screen.

The designers wanted you to just accept the failed result and move on, but that's contrary to the in-game incentives.

Such mechanics are disrespectful of players' time, and given that many people who play games like these started when they were young and now have jobs and children and not that much free time, that's generally not a great thing to add to your game. It made me drop Wasteland, that's for sure. (And in some other games I just installed mods/cheats to get rid of the chance element.)

Avernum's system (you need minimum skill X to open lock Y) is much better. Either 0 or 100, but no time is wasted.

And Geneforge's system is my favourite by far because it becomes a resource management game. You make the cost-benefit analysis and make a decision how to spend your skillpoints, your tools and your treasure and get something out of it either way. It's the only one I actually enjoy using.

(Final option, which nobody suggested, is a lock-picking mini-game. Those can be okay but mostly are also a waste of time. Less boring than watching a progress bar, but if it's a bad mini-game it becomes a headache.)

I like the living tool system in this game quite a lot.

There are plenty of non-tool reasons to invest in mechanics (disarming mines, using machines, disabling spirals and whatnot) so a character with heavy mechanics who opens everything does not feel robbed even if he has 50 tools left at the end of the game.

Meanwhile, a character who does not want to invest heavily in mechanics does not get that annoying feeling you have in Avernum where you HAVE to pass by all the locked stuff and will never even know what you are missing out on. Rather, you have to make decisions. Do I unlock this door with 10 tools and get an Artila cannister? Or do I decide this does not matter to me enough and move on?

You dislike this as a "guessing game" which is fair. But I like it much better than the frustration of not even being able to know what's behind a lock if your skill is one point too low.

Geneforge games always had this map system. I expect the remakes will all keep it.

Frankly, I like this system much better than any of the Avernum type maps. It's less immersive in some ways, but a lot easier to have an overview which makes me less likely to miss stuff, and it lets me break up my gameplay time in well-defined chunks. And it eliminates the walking-across-the-map gameplay the overland-map style games have, which frankly tends to be much less fun than exploring areas.

I can certainly understand why someone would prefer the other types of map. If you love exploring for secrets on an overland map or just find this type of map too game-y, it's probably not for you. But for me this system simply lets me enjoy the game the most.

35 minutes ago, Training-Anteater said:

Thanks all! After some experimenting, it seems that essence per attribute point is pretty similar - e.g. A 26-cost cryora has almost identical stats to a 26-cost drayk, at least with my shaping skills. So I guess my key takeaway is that the choice of creation really is skills-based now, not stats-based. 

Base damage also varies quite a bit.

A level 13 Cryoa: 18-60 damage for ice spit

A level 13 Roamer: 25-77 damage for fire spit

That's quite a significant difference for creations that otherwise have a very similar essence cost and are equally tough.

Level 13 Charged Vlish gives 24-56 damage.

Level 13 Searing Artilla gives 18-50 damage (and costs much more essence)

@Randomizer, since you know a lot about the game: I've been wondering: why does everyone seem to be ignoring Roamers? Their active abilities aren't very good admittedly, but when it comes to plain damage dealing they seem to be well ahead of the pack. (not listed here: the bonus they get from Rage, though that's a double-edged sword.)

Edit: One pretty neat trick I've found with Roamers is to let them take some damage and then cast Essence Shield on them. That way they get the damage boost from Rage, but don't get killed in return.

I'm not sure about the tier 3s, as I haven't found most of those yet, but with the tier 2s I don't think so.

I've found that Roamers deal considerably more ranged damage than Cryoas and cost about the same amount of essence. But the Cryoas have their excellent leap + frost aura + frost breath combo. And both get the toughness upgrade. Meanwhile, the humble Fyora is much weaker than the other two, but can spam up to two area effect fire breaths per turn and is dead cheap, so essence for essence it's still pretty useful to keep around mid-game.

For magic creations, Vlish don't hit nearly as hard as Artillas. (no acid) But a normal Vlish is actually considerably cheaper than a searing artilla, and can perma-bless your whole group and area-effect curse enemies. Not bad for 20 or so essence.

For battle creations, the Clawbugs bring poison/acid sprays to the table, which clearly is a big advantage over Thahds just punching things if you focus on battle creations.

Worst deal I've found was Battle Beta versus Battle Alpha. The Beta costs about 50% more essence (much more essence per upgrade) and deals the exact same amount of damage. All it seems to get is a bit more health. Though honestly I like neither creation.

In summary: I have tried various creation combos, but the one I like best is a mix.

Of course, I don't play on Torment. Might be different there.

I disagree with that last bit.

Sure, there are times and places where we are all willing to accept lack of realism because it would get in the way of a story. Like what you say about wounds. Those things can be hand-waved with "magic" or just ignored. "It's just a flesh wound."

But there are still times where a mechanic just seems so counter-intuitive or vaguely explained that I'm left scratching my head even if I don't hate the mechanic itself. Making the game mechanic seem logical within the game-world helps with that.

To take the lockpick example here: I liked it fine in Geneforge, because there it was explained in a way that made sense. They were living tools that would let you operate mechanisms and machinery you shouldn't. Very delicate, complicated bio-engineered life-forms that didn't live long after being forcibly inserted in something that wasn't supposed to accept them. So you needed a few of them to operate something simple and a whole bunch if you wanted to operate something complex. And if your character was very experienced with these things he needed to use fewer of them because he could make them last longer by avoiding stressing them or something. They were very expensive for the same reason: a bit of metal is cheap, but a complex living tool is not. The game-mechanic was identical, but because some explanations were offered and I could deduce others I liked it much better than in Avadon.

Hm. Disappointing. I loved the idea that it was possible to kill Tarkus, but difficult and that he could easily escape. But to then have the game ignore and contradict that, when it does acknowledge all kinds of other decisions I took... that takes the fun out of it a bit.

So, I finally finished this game just now. Great end-game sequence, fun game. However, the start of the final conversation with Redbeard left me scratching my head a bit.

Thing is, my opportunistic-loyalist-for-now character had managed to kill Wayfarer/Shadow Tarkus in the Beraza Woods thanks to some well-timed daze-inducing attacks and such. So Redbeard was left fighting some generic shadowdancer-assassin type whom he swatted aside with little difficulty. From what I read on the forum Shadow Tarkus was supposed to be there if you hadn't killed him.

Only when my character walks up to talk to RB, the dialogue reads as if Redbeard -did- fight Tarkus. And then Redbeard questions my guy about thingsTarkus supposedly said about his loyalty. Only the replacement-shadowdancer didn't say anything about that because he obviously didn't even know my character.

So, two questions. Firstly, I'm curious to hear how the confrontation would go if I had not managed to kill Tarkus. Are my assumptions above correct? Should Redbeard just not have asked about the Wayfarer? Would anything else have happened differently?

Secondly, have more people encountered this bug? Is there alternate dialogue for Redbeard which accounts for Tarkus being dead? Is this even a bug or is the writing just confusing?

Actually, it was more or less the opposite.

Slings were valued in antiquity because they could hurt even armoured targets. The stone doesn't go through, but that doesn't matter. The force is still transferred.

Slings also have a much better range than javelins.

However, javelins are easier to use and inflict a lot more hurt if they're not turned by very heavy armour. And they made shields unusable. (at least that was one of the ideas behind the roman pila)

Anyway, I'm playing this game with a roman party and not finding it very difficult (but then, the difficulty is set to normal) with just the one character using druid spells. (no beast or craft at all, just war and healing up to sixth circle)

But I'd love it if javelins were recoverable... as it is, I use them sparingly and carry 20+ per character with me into each dungeon... that's a bit weird, but the only way to have enough ammunition to use in tough fights. (especially against spellcasters)